Cirrus@Austlit

'In a New England country town to give a paper, academic Tom Wishart is struck by an amateur painting in the local art gallery. It looks just like him. Wishart is a foundling who knows nothing about his parents. The clue given by this uncanny resemblance sets him on a quest to discover his origins.

'As the search reaches back in time, the turbulent, shadowy lives of Paul Bushell, son of the squattocracy and disgraced Vietnam deserter, and Diana Saunders, vanished Aboriginal sportswoman, come into view and are played out? Could these be his parents? How and why was he abandoned? The trail leads to Sydney, Vietnam, Manila and Hong Kong, but the answers are found in a isolated place in the Blue Mountains.' (Publisher's blurb)

'What were the 60s & 70s really about?

How authentic were those stoned revolutionaries?

'What if it was all a fraud?

When small-press bibliographer Charles Dorritt recovers from a breakdown by doing a creative writing course, he announces he is publishing his memoirs of torture and sex-slavery at the hands of the security services.

Plant is called to lunch with the arts editor of a metropolitan broadsheet, life style journalist Angela Dark, and political speechwriter Ghostly Sperrit, all of whom seem deeply concerned the revelations should not appear. They hire Plant to have a word with Dorritt, but Dorritt heads off to Byron Bay and Plant pursues him through the dope lands of northern New South Wales.

A past era of magic mushrooms, free love, American friends, and an alternative newspaper of deep level inauthenticity begins to emerge, something that no one but Plant is keen to see revealed.

From the same college but a different school as John Le Carré, Michael Wilding will open your eyes, and darken your mind, with this vision of the not-so-secret world.' (From the publisher's website.)

'He is mysterious and immensely wealthy, a banker. She is his apparent opposite, creative and idealistic. But she too is lost and unhappy. They are separated by oceans and continents and much more. Despite their seeming differences, they fall in love. They arrange to meet in New York. Afterwards they will fly to London and from there to Paris, his suite at The Ritz, and to his château in the South of France. But there are many surprises ahead, especially for the woman whose journey leads her to Morocco and finally to the Swiss Alps where she finds the answers she has been looking for.

This unconventional love story incorporates a contemporary backdrop of many elements — conspicuous wealth and globalisation; the harm and suffering caused by the politics of medicine; the world of art, myth and literature; the power of places and the ecstasy and agony of falling in love.' (Source: Australian Writers Network, October 2011.)

'You are an unarmed man in the wilderness being hunted by men with guns and dogs.The ATM business? That number you pulled on the gullible art world? Those anonymous envelopes slipped under the door? Or deeper? Darker? A disappeared daughter? An absent son?

'Your name is Hergesheimer. This is your world. Deal with it.'

Source: www.scholarly.info/ (Sighted 17/11/2011).

'Yearning for the lands of the old gods, escaping the pressures of New York, controversial cultural commentator Marisa comes to Amsterdam in search of escape and inspiration. A fiery transsexual cult figure follows her intent on a showdown. A mysterious blonde beauty has waited centuries to be ready for this.

'The tenth book in Inez Baranay's lively and varied career, Always Hungry is an erotic entertainment about ambition, mortality and relationships, a social comedy with a chilling edge, with questions about the rationalisations we all make when our way of life is based on the suffering of others.' (From the author's website.)

'Shark City, a bullet-paced thriller set in Sydney and Bangkok, London and Glasgow, vividly captures the risks of working within the wilderness of mirrors that is covert operations. Returning to Sydney, his birth city, Ross Durman, a specialist contractor, believes he is again working for The Unit, the government agency from which he was expelled. His contact, a former comrade, Anton Van Dieman, reinforces the belief while outlining Durman's mission: to rescue the iconic ironman, Ian (Big Ig) Graeme, found guilty of drug smuggling and on death row in Bangkok...' (Publisher's blurb)

'Standing in the Shadow explores the sexual underside of life in Sydney.'

'Gallery owner Alice Ackerman hires Plant to find her husband, missing in Asia. Plant gets embroiled with the expatriate language teacher Bowles with a penchant for cut-price Bangkok bar-girls, excitable Indian professor Ghosh, a Manila bookseller with impeccable CIA connections, and exotic cabaret singer Anna-Imelda. Drugged and seduced at the Eternal Night Club, kidnapped and imprisoned in Baguio City, PLant is deported from the Philippines. Fired from the case, he is visited in his rural hideaway by the menacing international publisher Starr, whose taste for dangerous sex may be the reason he is later found hanged in a Bangkok hotel. The action moves rapidly through Thailand, India, the Philippines and the Australian Gold Coast.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Alfonso is a short novel set in Sydney between 1962 and 1971. The protagonist is a man from the northwest of Spain who migrates to Australia to escape poverty. When he arrives in Australia he confronts language problems, homesickness and isolation. He works as a carpenter and eventually buys an old house in Surry Hills, unaware of the cost and commitment associated with old houses and feuding neighbours. When the house is finished he meets a woman and they fall in love, but the woman leaves for England. The story then traces his search for love and in the process he finds a way to belong in his new country. More than a love story, this is a novella about the migrant experience in which all that is known is forfeited in the search for material security.'

Source: Author's blog (http://ahatfulofcherries.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/alfonso.html). (Sighted: 31/1/2014)

'Athens, November 1915. A city buffeted by the chaos of the war, a city swarming with spies and opportunists. When a British counter espionage unit is contacted by a man from Smyrna, it seems that a bold new plan is afoot to cut through the Turkish defences at nearby Gallipoli … until the finding of the man’s body in a room set aside for the meeting.

'Australian-born agent Robert Kaub is drawn into the investigation, and soon forced to confront memories of love and betrayal in pre-war Athens. An ominous note, an old coin from Ephesus, cryptic cables – Robert’s discoveries bring him eventually to a place where things could go either way for the Allied cause.

'Aegean battlefields. A besieged city. Deaths foretold. These are mirrored in a mystery shaped by the ill-fated attempt to capture Constantinople, a story tinted by the truths and untruths of war, a tragic tale akin to myth. ' (Publication summary)

'When Norton Asper, an architect at the top of his profession, forms a relationship with an exceptionally talented, radically alternative young interior designer, his friends are surprised. When she and her lover are murdered and he is found stunned and blood-stained at the scene, the police believe he is the killer. He will say nothing to anyone about his involvement. His silence is of deep concern. His lawyers need to know what has happened...' (Publication summary)

'‘May I?’

'She nodded.

'Andreas settled down beside Annabelle on the steps.

'They sat in silence, watching the harbour city below, their eyes following tiny coloured lights — boats scampering along the surface of the dark water. But it was the night sky with the stars and the moon, and the seagulls chasing insects caught in the upward lights, that held their fascination.

'Finally, they turned their gaze upon each other.

'‘We seem to have a profound affinity. Goethe wrote about the mystery of attraction and the atoms which link people to each other.’

'Annabelle’s eyes brightened. She listened with her whole being.

'‘It’s the title of one of his works, Elective Affinities,’ he continued, ‘the deep affinities between two people — that they choose each other. It’s very powerful. Have you read it?’

'Annabelle felt a shiver of recognition skimming along her skin.'